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Beatus Rhenanus Library
Inscribed 2011
What is it
The library and collected correspondence
of French humanist scholar Beatus Rhenanus
(1485–1547), comprising 1686 documents,
including 1287 printed works.
Why was it inscribed
The library is unique in that it was the working
collection of a single individual and contains several
books of which no other copies exist. The books’ authors
come from a wide spectrum, reflecting the expansion
of ideas that grew out of the Renaissance and also
the intellectual and religious ferment that consumed
Europe in the 16th century. Despite its uniqueness and
irreplaceability, the library is still famously housed in the
home town of its former owner.
Where is it
Bibliothèque Humaniste, Sélestat, France.
Beatus Rhenanus was an Alsatian of German origin
and a teacher, scholar, historian, publisher, writer and
translator who lived and worked in Paris, Strasbourg,
Basle and Sélestat, his home in childhood and later
life. By inclination he was a humanist and his library,
collected over the course of his life, gives a glimpse of the
Renaissance period, its explosion of intellectual and artistic
pursuit and its propagation of classic works from antiquity
through the medium of the printing press.
The humanist movement grew out of the Italian
Renaissance and its new attitudes to education and culture
expanded from the 14th century onwards. Humanism
rejected the more formalized learning structures
of medieval scholasticism and its classical training
through logic with rhetoric and grammar, in favour of the
education of the whole person by means of the liberal arts,
notably history, poetry and moral philosophy alongside
rhetoric and grammar. However, its influence spread far
beyond the educational and into every area of intellectual
and artistic concern.
This spread is reflected in the vast range of subject areas
Rhenanus’s books cover, including theology, religious
controversy, philosophy, history, politics, morals, law,
� A wood engraving of Beatus Rhenanus
medicine, grammar, education, geography, science in
antiquity, rhetoric, languages, technology, information,
mathematics and astronomy. Most of the works are
in Latin, the universal intellectual language of the day,
with some Greek and Hebrew as well as more modern
vernacular volumes in German, Italian and French.
During his time as a student Rhenanus worked in
a printer’s office and in later life put his experience to
good use, disseminating through the new medium
ancient literary and historic texts of which he had
acquired copies through his Europe-wide book-buying
network. His collecting and publishing work ensured
the survival of these texts and helped disseminate the
writings of authors such as Seneca, Tacitus and Pliny the
Elder. He also published and collected the work of his
contemporaries and fellow humanists, including Thomas
More and Desiderius Erasmus, probably the most famous
humanist of his day. Erasmus was also a personal friend
and Rhenanus edited his works for publication and wrote
his biography.
After Rhenanus’s death, the Latin school where he was
educated in Sélestat received his library. Famous even
among contemporaries, it is now virtually unique as the
libraries of his contemporaries, including Erasmus, were
broken up after their owners’ deaths.
(overleaf) The Humanist Library in Sélestat �
Beatus Rhenanus Library 165